When using AccessAlly, you can create personalized tracks and automate your membership site on WordPress with CRM tags. AccessAlly uses your CRM’s automation tags to control access to your membership site and online courses. When configured properly, you can use these tags to give (or revoke) access to your online courses… and automate it all from inside your CRM.
ARTICLE CONTENT:
Conditional Display by Tag
With AccessAlly’s conditional display shortcodes, you can show and hide a different area of a page based on what tags someone has. Watch this video to learn how:
Types of Tags
AccessAlly is built to work with your CRM’s tags so that you can have ultimate flexibility on permission management and automation.
Tags are meant to be used in these main ways:
Offering Access Tags
Access tags control whether or not a user can view the content inside your membership site / online course area. They are most often created through the Course Wizard, and are linked directly to content (page) permissions.
We recommend that you do NOT create your access tags manually (create them with the Offering Wizard, instead). The reason is because it involves changes to page permissions, which is both error-prone (changes need to be made to all pages) and maintenance-heavy (all future pages require the same manual modification).
The most important characteristic of the access tag type is permission-mapping:
- Clients WITH the tag have access to content X
- Clients WITHOUT the tag do NOT have access to content X
While this point might not seem important, it is crucial in a complex system when there are many tiers / programs.
Identity Tags
These tags are used to define who a client is, and can be manually created/applied at your discretion.
If your setup is extremely simple, your page-specific Access Tags might double as identity tags. (I.E. “AmbitionAlly_Certified_Partner” both gives a user permission to view a unique set of material on our site and tells us that they are members of our Certified Partner program.
You might also use identity tags when building out conditional content shortcodes or split tests for your site.
Example: AmbitionAlly_Certified_Parter
Trigger Tags
Trigger tags are used to start / stop an automation in your CRM. You’ll find opportunities to designate them throughout your AccessAlly site (in the screenshot above, you’ll see a variety of trigger tags that correspond to a pre-designed automation opportunity).These are the most dangerous tags, in the sense that they have extremely specific use cases (like stopping a subscription payment), and can only work if you build the “right” automation for them.
These tags will not work properly unless the automation they need to trigger is built correctly in your CRM.
It is recommended to use a specific postfix to differentiate them from each other (_Made_Purchase, _TriggerTag).
There are 2 main use cases:
- External trigger: a Trigger Tag might be added by an external event (the user made a purchase, a progress completion action, or a link click). Once applied, it is used to trigger a further CRM automation.
- Manual operation: If you create refund / cancel automations inside your CRM, it is recommended to trigger them manually with a trigger tag, to prevent it from accidentally running due to an error. If you wish, you might also add clients to an automation (like a refund/cancel) directly (bypassing the need for a trigger tag), but that has a couple disadvantages:
– There’s a high chance for error, since selecting the correct automation from a dropdown can be tricky.
– There is no audit trail for the trigger
For more specific tutorials on how to use tags within your membership site, please see this tutorial.
Payment Related Tags
1. Success Tag
When this tag is applied…
AccessAlly will automatically apply the tag you configure here every time a successful recurring payment is charged. (i.e. If you are setting up a monthly membership product, this tag will be applied monthly when the membership is automatically renewed.)
How to use it:
This tag should be used as a trigger for your CRM automations.
Example: If there is an automation that you would like run every month (like a monthly credit increase), you would use this tag as a trigger for that automation.
2. Failed Payment Tag
When this tag is applied…
Sometimes payments fail, it happens! Maybe a credit card expired, or it is currently maxed out. In either case, if a payment cannot be charged as usual, AccessAlly will apply the tag you designated in this area.
- AccessAlly will retry the payment 3 times with 1 day in between, which helps if the card was maxed out and just got paid. This won’t help if the card is expired.
- When the 3rd attempt fails, AccessAlly will automatically apply the Payment Failed tag.
How to use it:
Use this tag as a trigger for a “Failed Payment” automation in your CRM. (Tutorial Here.)
In some cases, you might want to try to process the payment again before revoking access. For example, you might decide to do one try every 3 days for 21 days. This is only possible if you’re using Stripe subscriptions, because PayPal subscriptions and retries are managed entirely by PayPal itself.
You can use a webhook to force a payment retry in AccessAlly. The webhook is ?aal_chargesubscription=###&productId=###, and you can get the correct numbers to insert in the “###” spots by looking at this product’s Automation tab and seeing what numbers are used for the revoke webhook. Or by using the webhook generator and selecting
You can add this webhook to your payment failed automation follow up sequence with the desired frequency to trigger a retry, using your CRM’s wait timers.
3. Revoke Tag(s)
When this tag is applied…
AccessAlly can automatically apply any tags you configure here when told to do so through either of two methods:
- When the HTTP Post / Webhook (listed in the automations tab) is run in a CRM automation. You may wish to add this Webhook at the end of a Failed Payment automation, for example.
- When you click the Revoke Subscription button in the admin area.
How to use it:
Revoke tags (properly configured) automatically negate access to any permission tags that the user has.
(In English: if you apply the “Online Course Revoke Tag” to a user, they won’t be able to access that course/page, even if they still have the permission tag).
It is recommended that you add any/all revoke tags that are needed to instantly revoke access to the corresponding pages on your site (this way you can manage everything in one place, and not have to review multiple CRM automations whenever a change is made or an error occurs).
NOTE: Adding the revoke tag does not cancel the subscription, it only removes access. If you need to cancel the subscription manually please see this KB.
4. Finish Tag
When this tag is applied…
AccessAlly will automatically apply this tag when a Payment Plan has reached it’s end. You may use this tag to trigger an automation letting the customer know their final payment has been made, or to unlock additional content.
5. Stop Tag
When this tag is applied…
AccessAlly will automatically apply the tag you configure here when told to do so via the Cancel or Pause subscription management buttons in the admin area.
How to Use It:
This tag should be used as a goal / stop tag in your CRM automations, so that an existing sequence is not continued after a subscription is canceled or stopped.
FAQs
You can create tags in the Tags Tab.
